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Thursday, 11 February 2016

GUEST BLOG: Managing travel in a multi-channel world - or how to herd cats in the modern age

I’ve never
actually herded cats, but I hear it’s a difficult, if not impossible task. Doing
business and getting things accomplished can feel more and more like herding cats
the more our channels of communication multiply and diverge. It used to be that
you had one, or maybe two, ways of contacting someone, your travel agency for
example - by telephone, or fax. Today, only a very few people even know where the
company fax machine is located, if there indeed is one.

Christophe Peymirat

The same
goes for the web. There used to be only one way to access the Internet, but
today the sound of a dial-up modem is commonly used to illustrate outdated,
slow technology from another generation. Smartphones, tablets, watches and soon
even your refrigerator will be connected. Imagine these as a herd of cats, and
now imagine that you depend on these cats for your company’s travel management.

Recently,
the Expedia®/Egencia® Mobile Index showed once again how attached travellers
are to mobile devices. Travellers
now consider it to be the single most indispensable item they carry with them
when they travel, ahead of their toothbrush, deodorant and driver’s license. So
assimilated has the device become that even the ever-polite, etiquette-conscious British are second only to Australia in mobile
etiquette tolerance - not bothered by most of the mobile activities other
nations find offensive. It’s only natural that we will want to book more and
more travel on mobile. A recent study by Criteo, a leading digital marketing
firm, shows that the share of mobile bookings almost doubled between Q2 2014
and Q2 2015, increasing from 12 to 23 percent worldwide.[i]

But mobile
addiction is not new. What’s becoming evident now is that screens are
multiplying and access to the Internet may no longer even require a screen. With
the multiplication of touch-points comes the challenge of keeping it all
together in one place. We expect that an email we read and answer on our
smartphone will automatically sync with our desktop mail server. I recently
spent three weeks outside of the office, and conducted all of my business using
only my smartphone. This would have been unthinkable just five years ago. So should
it go for booking travel. When a booking is made online, we expect to find that
booking on our mobile and vice versa. If I shop for a hotel on my iPad while
I’m on the sofa over the weekend – I want to be able to book it right away and
not have to wait until Monday to do it at the office. Convenience is something
we all crave and if travellers get it through your travel program, it will make
following the rules that much easier.

In addition
to multiple screens, we also use a multitude of apps. We’ve found that up to 30 percent of business travellers across Europe use multiple apps to
manage their business travel. What are they using them for? If you take a look
at the App Annie Index, the top downloaded travel apps in the US are for ground
transportation,
beating out airlines, TripAdvisor and even the ubiquitous Expedia app. So it
stands to reason that a good way of making sure travellers are finding what
they need and booking what they should is to put everything in a single app,
and connect that app to your travel program.

If you compare
our mobile behaviour to a herd of cats, what would your weapon of choice be to
get everyone moving in the same direction?One big juicy piece of tuna would surely do the trick - especially one
that is proven to be tasty.For
travellers, having an experience where we can do everything we need to on
whatever device we choose, and in one single app is akin to this big piece of
tuna.If the traveller’s experience is
fast, easy and effective, then keeping it all in one place becomes much easier
than herding cats.

Christophe Peymirat is Senior Vice President of Egencia EMEA. Based
in Paris at the Egencia European Headquarters, he will be speaking on the main
stage of the Business Travel Show on Day 1 from 11:30 – 12:30. Come hear his
thoughts on the pace of mobile in the business travel industry. Find out more
about Egencia at BTS stand B435

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